QA people are not testers, or are they?

The world of software companies is full of testers and test departments named as Quality Assurance. There is a long ongoing quarrel if QA and Test is the same or not. Long story short, no they are not the same! But a person working in QA needs a lot of skills a good tester has.

My official job title is QA Lead, but I deliberately use the term Test Lead and have it proudly in my signature. Because that’s what I am doing, and that is even what my job description says. Calling software testers by the name of quality assurance implies for many that there is a step in the “production” process that assures the quality. And this is wrong!

Quality Assurance is a term coming from the world of manufacturing. People working in Quality Assurance are monitoring and auditing the production process and keep an eye on it, that…